


You Clean Up Nice--With a Little Help

by gtanddragons



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, G/T, Gen, Giant/Tiny, M/M, Macro/Micro, Scene Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 20:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20477039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gtanddragons/pseuds/gtanddragons
Summary: AU: Finch is only a few inches tall, hence his paranoia and secrecy about his appearance.This is a scene rewrite of Harold helping John tidy up so he'll blend in with the Wall Street tycoons.





	You Clean Up Nice--With a Little Help

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I don't even remember when I wrote this???? Take it, please, I forgot how much I actually really liked it.

“What’s wrong with my other suits?” John grumbles.  
The man is awkwardly standing in front of the desk in the abandoned library that he and his ‘boss’, Harold, use as a base of operations. At the moment, his hands are resting on the desk, and he’s watching carefully as his tiny partner tugs his left sleeve cuff into place.  
“Oh, they’re fine-” Harold mutters dryly, tugging in order to straighten out the cuff. “-for a hired assassin, Mr. Reese. Just not for this particular job.”

John huffs, watching as Harold quickly hobbles across the desk to reach his other cuff.  
“And where am I going?”  
Finch quietly mutters to himself as he makes his way over to John’s other hand, reaching up to tug at the sleeve. Walking and moving around this much really aggravated his back, and he has no doubt that his ever-present limp will be far more pronounced than usual in the morning.

Ah, well. If he could just send John out on a job, then maybe his partner wouldn’t notice… Or have time to worry himself over it, if he did find out.  
“You’re going to mingle with the best and brightest- oof!”  
Harold grunts as he yanks at John’s sleeve, getting rid of a particularly large crease.  
“Ahem. In other words, Wall Street.”  
John frowns as he watches Harold struggle with the sleeve.  
“…Are you sure you don’t want me to do this?”  
Harold pants, shakily stepping back in order to inspect his handiwork. “Yes, I’m sure, Mr. Reese. Talented as you are, you are utterly hopeless when it comes to the science of formal attire… despite the fact that you wear suits every day, ironically enough.”  
Harold clears his throat; evidently he was finally satisfied that John’s sleeves were up to standard.  
“You have a new number,” he remarks, adjusting his glasses and leaning up against a stack of books on the desk as he gestures to a printed photograph stuck up on the wall. It shows a young man, somewhere between his late twenties and early thirties, with short, tidy, dark hair.  
“Mr. Adam Saunders. He’s a prop trader at the investment firm of Baylor Zimm.”  
“Prop trader?” John questions, stepping back from the desk and lowering his arms to his sides.  
“Proprietary.” Harold pauses before explaining further. “He invests the bank’s own money, not the client’s. He seems to be your typical overeducated, overcompensated Wall Street highflyer.”  
John can’t help but faintly smirk at the snide comment._ Ah, yes. The classic rich, eccentric type._  
His smirk turns into a look of mild confusion as he notices Harold frowning and looking him over.  
“Agh… Mr. Reese, what did I say about the pants?” Harold groans in exasperation as he moves from the stack of books, limping a little closer to the desk’s edge.  
John blinks before huffing crossly. “They’re fine.”  
“No, they’re not.” Harold grumbles as he runs his fingers through his thinning hair. “Now, if you would…?” The tiny hacker makes a vague gesture with his hand- one that John recognizes as ‘I need a lift but I would rather not call attention to it’.  
Although he could easily refuse the request (he’s still certain that he followed the instructions perfectly, thank you very much), John humors his partner and offers his hand, resting it palm-up on the desk.  
Although Harold hesitates at first- years of avoiding human contact like the plague were hard to unlearn, after all- before sitting on the edge of the former CIA operative’s hand and carefully scooting backwards, careful not to tweak his spine any further.  
John eyes Harold, patiently waiting for the man to ease into the center of his palm. Although he’s tempted to assist Harold with his free hand, he knows that it would be rude- and potentially frightening- to his employer if he were to do so without being asked.  
Once he’s settled in, John ever-so-slowly crouches down, lowering Harold to the floor.  
As he waits, Harold absentmindedly brushes his fingers along the surface of John’s hand. For him, it was always intriguing to look at the larger man’s plethora of scars and callouses… a testament to John’s involvement in countless fights, as well as his near-daily practice with firearms and other weapons.  
It’s a bit curious, really, now that Harold is thinking about it. Although John was a stubborn, dangerous, and intimidating man who used to be a government assassin for a living… he was the only person in the world that Harold completely trusted with his life.

_Funny how things work out that way._

Harold is startled from his thoughts as John quietly clears his throat. As quickly as he can, Harold shifts to the edge of John’s hand before carefully slipping to the floor and then struggling to clamber up onto the top of his partner’s shoe.  
“The cuff should _shiver_ on the shoe, not break,” Harold calls up to John, tugging at the cuff and frowning to himself.  
John faintly rolls his eyes, keeping a close watch over Harold as the smaller man goes about fixing the cuff properly.  
After a minute, Harold finally moves down from that shoe before moving to the other and taking a deep breath before climbing up.  
“Saunders has already had a brush with the SEC,” he explains, “And accusation of insider trading unproven, so his risk-taking might have led him into dangerous waters. I want you to get close to him.”  
Letting out an exhausted sigh, Harold slides back down to floor, now satisfied with his work.  
John reaches down and offers his hand once more, frowning at Harold’s statement. “I don’t know anything about Wall Street.”  
Harold huffs before using John’s thumb to hoist himself up into the other man’s hand. As he’s raised higher and higher, Harold gestures to the stack of books on the desk. “That one on the top, there, should help to get you started.”  
He gingerly slips from John’s hand and back onto the familiar surface of the desk, wincing as a flare of pain darts up his spine. Fortunately enough, John doesn’t notice, too busy with picking up and examining the aforementioned book.  
_‘A Random Walk Down Wall Street’, hm?_ he muses to himself, opening the book to a random page and skimming through it.  
“Although,” Harold pipes up, drawing John’s attention away from the book. “It doesn’t really matter. Banking is mostly looking clever and wearing the right clothes.” Leaning against the remaining books once more and inclining his head to look up at his partner, a smirk tugs at the corners of his lips. “And we’ve managed the second part!”  
John pauses, shooting the smaller man an exasperated glare as he shuts the book.


End file.
